Yes! Dunwoody Direct Primary Care (Dunwoody DPC) offers same day/next day appointments and walk-in visits for more serious illnesses and injuries. Even better, you will have your doctor’s cell phone number and email, allowing direct access to your physician in the evening and on weekends for urgent issues.

Insurance companies have made billing extremely complicated and difficult to understand, even for physicians, let alone for patients. Direct Primary Care is a fantastic way to avoid those frustrations, and to return to a simpler model - patients pay a fixed monthly fee for their membership, and we’ll provide excellent care for those patients. So medical billing, coding, co-pays, deductibles, and all those intrinsic, foundational elements of modern medicine have no place at Dunwoody DPC.

In a word, TIME. Because we limit our patient enrollment, we have time not only to fit you in to the schedule, but to take 30-45 minutes for your visit, if that‘s what you need. In Direct Primary Care, you don’t feel hurried. You have plenty of time to spend with your physician.

Both DPC and Concierge Medicine put the doctor-patient relationship foremost in the construct of the practice. The main difference is that in Concierge Medicine, after paying a monthly or annual fee, the practice typically collects co-pays and bills insurance for office visits. In Direct Primary Care, when you come to the office for medical care, there’s no charge for the visit. The focus is on spending time with your physician, getting the healthcare that you need.

Since the model for Direct Primary Care involves a monthly subscription fee, some younger/healthier patients may rightly ask, “where’s the value in that for me?” Under the traditional healthcare model, healthcare is not really HEALTHcare, it’s DISEASEcare. Alternatively, the time set aside for patient care in the DPC model is 100% a move away from REACTIVE, disease-based care, to a PROACTIVE, prevention-oriented care model.

If you have a more serious illness or injury, feel free to contact Dr. Loc, and he can help you decide if you need to head to the nearest emergency room. ER visits won’t be covered by your Dunwoody DPC subscription fee, and that’s why you need to carry additional insurance. If you end up in the ER or admitted to the hospital, Dr. Loc can act as a liaison between you and your family on one hand, and the hospital healthcare team on the other. We can help explain decision making, procedures, test results, and we’ll have an ongoing dialogue with the medical or surgical team who is caring for you in the hospital.

Dunwoody DPC has no relationship with large corporations or insurance companies, so we can provide a wide variety of care more economically. As we’ve said, simple labs, x-rays, and procedures are included with your monthly subscription fee, and you’ll never pay a co-pay, co-insurance or deductible. We can also provide access to more advanced imaging or nonstandard lab tests at dramatically reduced prices.

Yes, we recommend it. You can increase your annual deductible, which should lower your premiums. Much of your healthcare can be handled at Dunwoody DPC, where we have the capability to provide Urgent Care services as well as Primary Care.

For the time being, the answer to that is, unfortunately, “no”. Because of the complexities of Medicare regulations, we will not be able to accept Medicare patients for now, but hopefully we will within the next 6 months. Please keep checking back for updates.